Warp Drive Just Got 2.6 Septillion Times Closer to Reality

Star Trek-style "warp" drive allowing faster-than-light (FTL) travel was shown to be theoretically possible in 1994, but the energy requirements were enormous: The entire mass-energy of a planet the size of Jupiter was required to power the drive, relegating the concept into the most distant future scenarios - timescales on the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of years, depending on one's level of optimism.  But newly refined research by NASA tweaking the parameters of the theory finds that it's possible with a mass-energy no greater than a few hundred to a few thousand kilograms: A factor of 2.6 septillion (2.6 x 10²⁴) reduction in energy requirements.  And this is merely the second generation of the theory, so the possibilities for future improvements in theoretical practicality seem vast.